


Its Settled

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [26]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, Child Abuse, Coming of Age, Forced Marriage, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 05:22:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6787111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cheedo thought she would be young forever, a child of the Vault. She was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They woke up one morning, and Jiemba had taken on his bat-shape. That was fine, it had been night, and sometimes her door was even left unlocked these days. Cheedo knew it was a test, and never opened the door herself, but she thought it was a good thing Jiemba took precautions. Like being able to see in the dark, when it was dark on the outside of the world. 

It didn’t make much difference in their room, where she never let the lantern go out unless it ran out of wick or oil. But she sat up and rubbed her eyes and thought nothing of it, besides that she was a little cold and Jiemba could have taken the shape of something bigger and warmed her up. 

“Are you okay?” she asked, when her daemon didn’t move. 

“I’m fine,” he said, in a wavering sort of voice. 

Cheedo got up and poked over the crumbs of last night’s dinner, licking her finger and sticking it to the plate to make sure she’d gotten them all. “You sound a little funny,” she said, still not worried, her mind more on the stories she wanted to tell the Dag today. 

“Oh, yes,” Jiemba said, and then after a moment, “Cheedo. How old are we?” 

Cheedo paused in her crumb-gathering, standing to look at where Jiemba was hanging off the corner of her bed, claws dug into the dangling edge of the sheet. “About six thousand days or so. I guess. The Immortan was saying something, but I was busy reading, and it wasn’t a question, so I didn’t quite hear it. Weren’t you listening?” It had been getting harder and harder to focus on reading the alethiometer. The answers took longer and longer to become clear to her. But she thought it was just the distraction of the Wives, so lovely and so loving, and she only tried harder. 

“I guess not,” Jiemba said, his voice suddenly very small. “Cheedo. It wouldn’t be so bad if I ended up settling as something… not very strong. Would it?”

Cheedo came to crouch in front of him, cupped her hands around his shivering bat body and touched her nose to his. “That wouldn’t be so bad,” she said, cradling him close. “I think that would be very nice, actually. You could hide in corners, be small where no one could get you. Be dark so no one could see you. Okay?”

“Okay. That’s. That’s good. Because I think this is what I’ll always be,” Jiemba was whispering now, even as someone knocked on their door, and Capable’s voice said something through the thick wood. 

“My own little Jiemba bat,” Cheedo said, helping him pull his long claws free of the blanket and giggling when he climbed onto her shoulder. “We can ask the Dag what sort of heroes have bat daemons! And we’ll ask Miss Giddy too. And we can always make up our own stories, just like always. You’ll be the best hero in the world, Jiemba, wait and see.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Joe discovering that his patience has paid off. (Writing Joe makes me nauseous, so i have helpfully Not Done That. This takes place 24 hours after the first chapter.)

Cheedo was crying. She was trying not to, but she had been so sure of her safety, so sure that the alethiometer would keep her out of Joe’s hands. Toast wondered out loud if Fragile had never thought to ask her truth-teller what would happen when she got too old and too pretty.

“Would you have asked?” Capable wondered back, fiercely. “Would you have been able to, knowing what one of the answers might be?”

“I’m just saying,” Toast scowled back. “Depending on that sack of rotting skin makes less sense than dumping out good water in the sand.”

“Quiet!” Everyone stopped to stare and the Dag’s vixen, who had snapped out that one word with more volume and vehemence than any of them had ever heard. “You’re not helping. And if you’re not helping, you can shut. Up.” 

The Dag was sitting by Cheedo’s side, hands fluttering uncertainly about her face and shoulders before settling on holding onto Cheedos’, voice as gentle as her daemon’s had been sharp. “What’s his name then, your daemon?” she asked, because he had settled last night, of course he had. That was why they were here now. And he was hidden under a fold of her bridal train, a vague lump that none of the others had been brave enough to comment on.

Cheedo took several hiccuping breaths, rubbing angrily at her eyes with the thin white fabric. It was obvious she hated it as much as they did, and not even Toast could muster a scrap of resentment against someone raised in Joe’s greedy, chalky clutches. A girl who, until last night’s endless ceremonies, had claimed her worth with a needle’s dance and a mind full of symbol ladders. 

“Jiemba,” came the thin, wavering voice of her daemon from underneath the cloth. 

The Dag crouched down, sliding off the stone to kneel as close as a penitent, without ever once letting go of Cheedo’s hands. “And what sort of an animal are you?” she asked, as if they were the only two creatures in the world. 

Slowly, very slowly, a small black head appeared out from under the protective cloth. Cheedo’s breathing slowed and changed to long, snotty sniffs as she tried to swallow back her fear. “I’m a bat, I think,” he said, very uncertainly, perched now on Cheedo’s girlish knees. “A fruit bat. We like the dark.” 

And the Dag smiled in that odd way of hers, where the emotion behind her smile was not happiness, but grief. 


End file.
